Quote Originally Posted by MarkF
I've heard that about Walmart, Home Depot and a few others. That what looks like the same product is actually made cheaper. Might be true, might be urban legend and could also be becuae the big chains buy in bulk at huge discounts. Maybe the manufactures dump their sub-par products in bulk.
Actually they are probably all really similiar products, it is expensive for manufacturers to make lots of different products, however to simply repackage something is relatively easy and is a great sales & marketing tool. Think about all of the "we will match any price" protection items, however how often can you actually match model numbers across the major retailers? The exact same product is simply rebadged to allow this practice.

Yes, there are some manufacturers that will grade their products, but that is typically done on more small run products, cause after all how does one grade a tent quality during the build?